Page 10 - A Little Bush Maid

too; ready enough to chatter like a magpie if her father were in the mood,
but quick to note if he were not, and then quite content to be silently beside

him, perhaps for hours. They understood each other perfectly. Norah never
could make out the people who pitied her for having no friends of her own

age. How could she possibly be bothered with children, she reflected, when
she had Daddy?

As for Norah’s education, that was of the kind best defined as a minus
quantity.

"T won’t have her bothered with books too early," Mr. Linton had said when
nurse hinted, on Norah’s eight birthday, that it was time she began the

rudiments of learning. "Time enough yet--we don’t want to make a
bookworm of her!"

Whereat nurse smiled demurely, knowing that that was the last thing to be
afraid of in connexion with her child. But she worried in her responsible

old soul all the same; and when a wet day or the occasional absence of Mr.
Linton left Norah without occupation, she induced her to begin a few

elementary lessons. The child was quick enough, and soon learned to read
fairly well and to write laboriously; but there nurse’s teaching from books
ended.

Of other and practical teaching, however, she had a greater store. Mr.

Linton had a strong leaning towards the old-fashioned virtues, and it was at
a word from him that Norah had gone to the kitchen and asked Mrs. Brown
to teach her to cook. Mrs. Brown--fat, good-natured and adoring--was all

acquiescence, and by the time Norah was eleven she knew more of cooking
and general housekeeping than many girls grown up and fancying

themselves ready to undertake houses of their own. Moreover, she could
sew rather well, though she frankly detested the accomplishment. The one
form of work she cared for was knitting, and it was her boast that her father

wore only the socks she manufactured for him.

Norah’s one gentle passion was music. Never taught, she inherited from her
mother a natural instinct and an absolutely true ear, and before she was